i havent designed it yet, i have yet to design a working charger circuit that doesnt suck, a case and the triggering circuit.
i dont want to use mains because it ruins the fun of having some portable awesome so ill stick with 1.5v, 6v and 9v batteries, ill have a look around for one of those step down transformers, what sort of price range should i be looking for?
you mention that an empty cap bank will behave like a dead short, will this draw too much current too quickly and damage my charger circuit? a 555 will be fine wont it? the 555 will be driving a bu808dfi darlington pair which seems quite beasty in comparison to most, it is able to drive a flyback with relative ease and no heating from a 6v or a 9v battery after 10-20 seconds.
IN ADDITION: my firing circuit involves 5-10 parallel 600v 160A 20ms surge rated triacs, will they be ok? i couldnt find a single large SCR 1600-3000A surge rated for less than £50 which is totally not worth it for what im doing, my triacs costed about £1 each or something , i hope theyll stand up to it.